was giving the captain information which could not be otherwise
than grateful to him, but he was not the less aware that the old
man would be furious at being so treated. What, pension him! put
him on half-pay--shelf him for life, while he was still anxiously
expecting that promotion, that call to higher duties which had so
long been his due, and which, now that his powers were matured,
could hardly be longer denied to him! And after all that he had
done for his country--his ungrateful, thankless, ignorant
country--was he thus to be treated? Was he to be turned adrift
without any mark of honour, any special guerdon, any sign of his
Sovereign's favour to testify as to his faithful servitude of
sixty years' devotion? He, who had regarded it as his merest
right to be an Admiral, and had long indulged the hope of being
greeted in the streets of Devonport as Sir Bartholomew Cuttwater,
K.C.B., was he to be thus thrown aside in his prime, with no
other acknowledgement than the bare income to which he was
entitled!

It is hardly too much to say, that no old officers who have
lacked the means to distinguish themselves, retire from either of
our military services, free from the bitter disappointment and
sour feelings of neglected worth, which Captain Cuttwater felt so
keenly. A clergyman, or a doctor, or a lawyer, feels himself no
whit disgraced if he reaches the end of his worldly labours
without special note or honour. But to a soldier or a sailor,
such indifference to his merit is wormwood. It is the bane of the
professions. Nine men out of ten who go into it must live
discontented, and die disappointed.

Captain Cuttwater had no idea that he was an old man. He had